Quantrill in the Movies: John Tibbetts

William Quantrill’s August 21, 1863 Confederate raid on Lawrence, Kansas, left nearly 200 men and boys dead and the city in flames. Film expert John Tibbetts explores how that dramatic story has found its way onto celluloid in movies as varied as Dark Command (1940), Quantrill’s Raiders (1958), and Ang Lee’s locally-filmed Ride With the Devil (1999).

Tibbetts is associate professor of film theory and criticism at the University of Kansas. A broadcaster, journalist, artist, and scholar, he has written and illustrated nine books, among them The Cinema of Tony Richardson and His Majesty the American: The Films of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.